The hefty size and considerable range of this collection of twenty-six essays by Edward Hoagland reflects the esteemed writer's career and talents. Arranged in three sections -- Animals, Places and People -- the pieces included here are drawn from his books and magazine essays.
Hoagland's wildlife writings, for which he is probably best known, are represented here with selections from "The Courage of Turtles" and "Red Wolves and Black Bears," as well as a half dozen pieces originally published in Saturday Review, Granta, Vermont Magazine and other periodicals. The pieces in "Places" include "Of Cows and Cambodia," "Walking the Dead Diamond River," "Mountain Notch" and "O Wyoming." In the "People" section are essays about John Muir, Thoreau, Edward Abbey, Ansel Adams and Gilbert White.
Photo by Eugene Krasnaok on unsplash
... We have disacknowledged our animalness. Not just American Indians spoke affectionately to turtles, ravens, eagles and bears as "Uncle" and "Grandfather," but our ancestors as well. The instant cousinhood our children feel for animals, the way they go toward them directly, with all-out curiosity, is a holdover from this. (from "In Praise of John Muir")
If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking -- one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.
Predominantly personal and first person, Hoagland's essays are like gnarly pines poking up from the granitic New England soils from which he was nurtured. Neither sentimental nor despairing, his nature writing is tough and pragmatic. "The scenery that recruits our spirits in temperate weather may turn unforgiving in winter," he writes. " It doesn't care whether we love it and pay the property taxes to save it from development, having walked over it yard by yard in clement conditions. When the birds flee south and other creatures, from bears to beetles, have crawled underground to wait out the cold, we who remain have either got to fish or cut bait; burn some energy in those summer-lazy muscles cutting wood, or take some money out of the bank."
Ranging from 1968, when he wrote an essay version of "The Courage of Turtles" for The Village Voice, to "Ansel Adams at 100," written for Aperture in 2002, this volume spans an enormous range of time and space to document the work of America's most accomplished nature essayist.
Nature Writing by Edward Hoagland
The Courage of Turtles (1971)
The Moose on the Wall (1974)
Red Wolves and Black Bears (1976)
African Caliope (1979)
The Edward Hoagland Reader (1979)
The Tugman's Passage (1982)
Wyoming Stories (1986)
City Tales (1986)
Heart's Desire (1988)
Balancing Acts (1992)
Tigers & Ice: Reflections of Nature and Life (1999)
Compass Points: How I Lived (2002)